The Stephenville plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
89° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is 87° in 1921.
Stephenville’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glen Rose Limestone (limestone, marlstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Stephenville reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Bosque, the South Bosque and the Brazos: about 530 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waco Lake.
410 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stephenville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stephenville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Stephenville normally reaches 69° and falls to 42°. The record high is 87°, in 1989; the record low 20°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.43 in, fell in 1923.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Stephenville 9 NNE, 11 miles north-northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
